


Fix-It

by cuddlesome



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Excessive References To Lightsaber Lore, F/M, Introspection, Kylo's lightsaber is complete garbage, Lightsabers, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8599807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/pseuds/cuddlesome
Summary: Rey makes an effort to repair Kylo Ren's lightsaber after stealing it from him.





	

Rey pulls Kylo Ren’s lightsaber to her with the Force. There is not as much ease as when she had called Anakin Skywalker’s—and that hadn’t been easy to begin with—but she is determined to make sure he remains disarmed after she knocks him to the ground. His lightsaber lands in the palm of her left hand with an unfamiliar weight in comparison to the still ignited one she holds in her right.

 

Kylo Ren looks enraged at the sight of her holding both weapons. He attempts to get to his feet, but cannot manage to lift his torso with the stress of his wounded shoulder. Rey does not get a chance to ignite his lightsaber as a gulf opens up between them. She shoves it into the pack at her hip, turns away from him, and does not think about it for some time, too concerned with Finn’s awful condition.

 

She only remembers that she has the weapon which had injured Finn, killed Han Solo, and claimed however many more victims when her pack makes a metallic clunk. She discovers it as she puts it down in the dorm supplied to her on D’Qar for the night before she sets out to find Luke Skywalker. She almost flinches at the noise. Rey has to spend a moment disassociating the weapon from the horrible acts committed with it before she can touch it.

 

Upon examination, Rey discovers that Kylo Ren’s lightsaber is a complete piece of garbage, just like its owner.

 

The hilt rests heavy and cool in her hands. If she doesn’t look at it or feel the pitted surfaces too much she can almost imagine it having some resemblance to the regalness of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. That is only if she really stretches her imagination, though.

 

As things are, Rey looks in disgust at the ramshackle appearance of the outside. Making sure to keep her hands far from the top of the hilt, Rey flicks the activator, releasing the main plasma blade followed shortly by the quillons. Red light bathes her room, giving the plain military quarters a sudden sinister ambiance. The rumbling growl and the way the lightsaber shakes in her grip with the near-overload of power almost causes Rey to turn it off immediately. She steels herself, though. She’d come this far, hadn’t she?

 

With ginger movements, Rey swings the lightsaber from side to side, then in an arc. It’s big and heavy and ridiculous. She might as well be trying to fight with a cudgel for how well it slices through the air. She takes back any mental comparisons she made to Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. To top it off, there are continual sparks leaping off of the blades and threatening to singe her hand.

 

A sword, a glowstick, a cudgel, and a sparkler thrown all into one. She had to hand it to Kylo.

 

How did he fight with this thing? How had he spun it in such elegant arcs when it handled so poorly? How long had he had the schlocky lightsaber that he mastered it in spite of its inherent design flaws?

 

There is a lot more wrong with it outside of just the blades, she discovers once she turns it off. From the corroded, partway melted vent shrouds to the worn-away paint to the exposed circuitry along the hilt, there are innumerable problems. She can even slide her finger beneath a red wire that runs along the outside and pluck it. The weapon is covered in scratches and dents, making Rey compelled to believe he had thrown it against rough surfaces more than once when he wasn’t using the blade to vent his frustration instead. She doesn’t have trouble picturing him abusing the weapon to the point of dislodging the kyber crystal inside.

 

She discovers when she pries open the lightsaber with some tools that some of the technicians in the Resistance base let her borrow that the reality is far worse. The kyber crystal is cracked. Had he broken it? Something in Rey burns a bit at the idea that he had had possession of something so precious and caused irreparable damage to it. Then again, perhaps this was how he had found it.

 

Rey knew some things about the origins of lightsabers and the pieces that made them up thanks to legends on Jakku about them. Her knowledge was supplemented by information that the general and some of the Resistance’s archives supplied her with.

 

“The crystal is the heart of the blade,” she recalls as she looks at the cracked kyber crystal.

 

With this in mind, it almost feels sacrilegious as she shoves the end of a hydrospanner between the crystal and its cradle and pries it out of place. Rey places the red kyber crystal in the center of her palm and holds it up to eye level. It’s about half the size of a standard portion. Outside of the body of the lightsaber, it seems surprising that something so small could fuel a weapon that caused so much damage. How powerful could a pretty little crystal be? Curious, she reaches out with the Force and gives the crystal a poke.

 

Agony courses through her body, making her skin feel as though it is blistering. Rey drops the kyber crystal like it has turned into a hot coal. It may as well have for how much sudden pain it caused her. The crystal makes a harsh _ting_ as it bounces off of one of the lightsaber’s shrouds, rolls, then comes to rest next to Rey’s discarded hydrospanner. Rey stares at it warily, trying to calm her breathing. She’s overcome with the same initial instinct that she felt when she first picked up Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber—“I’m never touching that thing again!”—but she rationalizes that the crystal hadn’t showed her a terrifying vision or caused her actual bodily harm. Besides, even if it seemed to the contrary, anything it could do to her would only be in her mind, right?

 

Sucking in a final breath, Rey picks the crystal back up between forefinger and thumb and places it back in her palm. Once she has determined that so long as she keeps her presence in the Force away from the crystal she will prevent any more reactions, Rey is able to satiate her scavenger’s curiosity and go back to examining it.

 

She runs her fingers over the imperfections in the rough surface of the crystal and holds it up to the light. The cracks shine honey yellow amidst the otherwise blood red crystal. Beautiful, but very clearly broken.

 

Just like its owner, she starts to think again, then balks midway through the sentiment. Despite wincing away from the idea, Kylo Ren’s face surfaces in Rey’s mind. The burn she left across his face was ragged and nasty, a much harder break up of his pale face than what his lips or freckles or dark brows had provided. Even visualizing what effect the scarring will have, Rey can’t help but imagine he’ll look just like the kyber crystal; pretty in spite of imperfection.

 

Rey closes her fingers around the crystal and swallows. She places it to one side where it is out of her line of vision, then gets to work taking apart the rest of the lightsaber. After some time, she has all of the pieces laid out in orderly rows before her. It’s just like when she organized the scrap she harvested on Jakku, only even ancient starship parts were better preserved than some pieces of Kylo Ren’s saber. The focusing shunt falls to pieces when she removes it and one of the power field conductors doesn’t match the others. It’s as if a child put it together in an afternoon.

 

Rey finds herself inclined to find replacement pieces and fix the mess of a lightsaber up. It’s just a project to occupy herself with, she reasons. There’s no way she can sleep. She’s far too antsy to so much as lay down. Besides, she muses, maybe she can use a lightsaber of her own once she gives Luke Skywalker his father’s back. Have the fiery red blade associated with some good things to counteract the bad.

 

Rey’s replacements end up being almost as piecemeal as the originals since she just gathers a bunch of spare parts from any of the half-asleep Resistance fighters willing to give them to her. Still, they’re new, and Rey is confident that with the fresh pieces, some buffing, and paint, she can fix the lightsaber up a bit.

 

If only Kylo Ren were so easily fixed, she muses as she extracts a wire that had begun to fray.

 

Once she has mended the individual pieces, it is ready to be made whole again. Though Rey has the tools to put the lightsaber back together by hand the same way she pulled it apart, an instinct she has come to recognize is the pull of the Force takes over before she can. For a moment, she resists. Then she shuts her eyes and breathes. Her hands lift into the air of their own accord. She feels rather than sees the individual pieces of the lightsaber come together, slotting into each other until it is a whole. She murmurs what few words she can remember from traditional lightsaber ceremonies, then opens her eyes.

 

Floating between her hands is the reborn lightsaber, the wiring covered, the vent shrouds reinforced, and all-round gleaming. She hopes the insides are half as good as how the outside looks.

 

The real test is made when she turns on the activator. The blades still aren’t entirely stable—it would probably take an entirely new crystal for that, and even thinking about replacing that feels wrong, somehow—but plasma flickers gently at the edges now instead of sputtering embers. It has more of an appearance of soft candlelight than a roaring chemical fire. Its growling has calmed to a deep, contented hum and the vibration is minimized.

 

The problems about how heavy it is still apply, despite Rey’s efforts, but in the hands of its proper wielder it would probably work better. Rey blinks at that thought. Surely she’s the proper wielder, now.

 

Something—the Force?—incessantly contradicts her.

 

Despite her current ownership, the lightsaber will always be Kylo Ren’s. The realization dawns on her as she ineffectually swings the saber through the air. She may have made improvements upon it, but that was only possible because of him providing the basis.

 

Well, Rey thinks, aggravated, then what’s she to do? Give it back? Hope that the newfound tranquility and restored nature of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber will one day match his heart?

 

Much to her consternation, her feelings tell her yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Some pals and I in the Ring in the Reylo Gift Exchange decided to do some fluffy prompts for these two to take a break from our main projects. This was for the prompt "Rey steals Kylo's saber." I ended up with this... an excessively technical guide to Kylo Ren's lightsaber from Rey's point of view. [Here's Kylo's lightsaber according to the artbook for reference. ](http://41.media.tumblr.com/ffb6a898fabbd723e955b8683c64b5fb/tumblr_nzrn5rcmEx1r105mzo3_r1_1280.jpg)  
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> [Feel free to talk to me/send me requests on tumblr.](http://cobwebbing.tumblr.com/)


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